


warmest part of the winter

by warmfoothills



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Hogwarts Eighth Year, M/M, Silly and romantic, almost, and unbeta'd so apologies for any mistakes, as usual this is longer than i had planned, i just listened to a lot of craig armstrong music and got emotional, not much to do with romeo and juliet tbh, playing fast and loose with the layout of hogwarts because i don't remember where everything is, teenagers in love, they're a bit sad and sweet and cold and bad at conversing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-06 22:29:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17353811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmfoothills/pseuds/warmfoothills
Summary: It’s not even a balcony, it’s just a window with a bit of a ledge, and Draco’s read Shakespeare anyway, he knows how this one ends.





	warmest part of the winter

Draco’s new room is on the third floor and he can see mountains from the window. If he leans out as far out as possible without falling, and stretches to the left, he can just see the edge of the lake, dark and still in the moonlight. It’s the first thing he does the night he arrives because everything about coming back to school feels different and strange this year and being able to watch the water is a small comfort, even hanging halfway out of the window like this instead of with his nose pressed to the glass of the Slytherin dorm windows.

It’s that odd, nothing-y bit of late December after Christmas that he used to spend curled up in his room with his gifts, or slumped in the library at the Manor, eating whenever he felt like it and watching his parents decide whose New Year’s party they would be making an appearance at that year.

“Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you need anything,” Headmistress Mcgonagall had told him before she’d shut the door behind her and left him to unpack. “Your head of house won’t be here until the new year.” Draco’d nodded, noting her clipped tone and wondering how she could even bear to talk to him.

The restoration work on the school is finally done, four months behind schedule, and Draco still doesn’t quite believe they’ve let him come back to finish his final year. He doesn’t know if he’s been given his own room because they want to keep him away from everyone, or if all the returning eighth years are being housed individually. So far, he hasn’t seen anyone but teachers. Term doesn’t start until late January but he hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of another three weeks in the Manor with his mother, who looks as though some large, vital part of her has been locked up in Azkaban with her husband.

It’s cold with the window wide open. Draco doesn’t mind, he’s been wearing thick layers inside for months. Something about the freezing air feels sterilising and it was the only way he could think of to get rid of the dead, stagnant feeling at home. Here the air smells even cleaner than in Wiltshire, the bite of it at once familiar and shocking, and he stands there long enough that the temperature of his room, when he finally pulls his head back in, is barely discernible from the outside.

 

///

 

There’s a small ensuite off his bedroom, just a toilet and a sink, but he appreciates the privacy anyway. The elves are even sending food up for him -- Mcgonagall had told him meals in the Great Hall wouldn’t start up again until the rest of the school returned, and it means he doesn’t have to leave his room at all, except when he needs to shower. He still has use of the Prefects’ bathroom for that, if he wants, which feels weirder than anything else for some reason, still having those privileges after everything he’s done. There’s no one around as he walks up the two floors to get there. He doesn’t even pass any ghosts, and it makes him feel like he’s up in the middle of the night, though the sun’s not long gone down.

 

///

 

He’s dragged a chair over to the window and is curled up in it, staring over in what he assumes is the direction of the lake, though it’s near impossible to tell with moon hidden by clouds, when there’s a noise from below and Draco realises he's not the only one who's back early.

He looks down. There’s movement: Potter, standing in the square of light that Draco’s window casts on the dark grass.

“Hi,” Potter says, voice weird. Or maybe Draco’s forgotten what it sounds like. “I saw you in the window.”

Draco doesn’t say anything, just stares at him. He looks better than the last time Draco saw him, not that that’s especially surprising. His hair’s shorter, still a mess, but not the tangled length it had been during the war.

“Hello.” It comes out like a question. Potter stares right back at him, and there’s a pause long enough to be awkward.

“Sorry, I--.” Potter tips his head to the side slightly. “How’ve you been?”

Draco blinks. “Well. And you?”

It’s too polite, a nice, neat, formal lie, but Draco feels blindsided. He hadn’t thought-- he knew he’d have to see Potter again eventually, of course, but he hadn’t been expecting it quite so soon. Seven months, and he’s never actually stopped to consider what it was going to be like, which is stupidly hindsighted for someone whose main pastime used to be thinking about Potter and what he was going to do next time they interacted.

Potter’s looking up at him seriously, face unreadable. “Good,” he says.

Draco forcibly resists the urge to fidget. “When did you-- I didn’t know anyone else was back yet.”

Potter makes an odd, aborted movement, hands shifting into his pockets. “I’ve been here since summer.”

Draco’s sure his surprise shows on his face.

“I went home for Christmas. The Burrow-- the Weasley’s place,” Potter says. “But I’m back here now.”

“Right.”

“I have a house but I’m not living there.” He gestures at what must be a window below that Draco can’t see. “I’m down on the ground floor.”

“Ok.”

“I didn’t want to be too high, you know.” Potter’s rambling. “I didn’t want a view of the forest.” He flinches like he’s said too much. Apparently he’s the kind of person who’ll just keep talking if there’s an uncomfortable silence to fill. Draco’s never noticed that before, but then they’ve hardly had many conversations over the years.

He tries to think what the him of three years ago might have said about Potter being allowed his pick of rooms. Draco had taken what they’d assigned to him and been thankful he wasn’t being locked up in a tower somewhere.

“Of course you got to _choose_ your room,” he tries, but it comes out more tired than anything. Potter only scrunches his face up, the hint of a self-deprecating smile half hidden at the corner of his mouth, and shrugs. He looks relieved that Draco’s said something, stopped the string of words coming out of his mouth.

“Is anyone else..?” Draco asks, trailing off. Potter does the weird shrug-head-shake thing.

“Don’t think people are back ‘til classes start.”

Draco knew that really, but still. It was something to say.

“Yeah. Well, I should-- bed.” He gestures behind him.

“Of course.”

He glances away from Potter’s face, making to move back inside, but Potter's not finished.

“I’m glad you’re back, Malfoy.”

Draco looks down from where his eyes had unconsciously resumed their search for the lake in the darkness, his eyebrows raising.

Potter’s hands are in his pockets. “I don’t think it would have felt the same without you.”

“Nothing feels the same anyway, Potter.”

Draco’s sigh is small enough he knows Potter doesn’t hear it.

“Yeah,” Potter says. “Yeah, I guess not,” and then heads back into his own room without another word.

 

///

 

Draco spends the next day walking around the grounds, trying to put the odd reunion with Potter out of his head and focus on cataloguing what’s changed. He’d done the same back at the Manor on September 1st, feet restless, body itching to be doing something without the usual rush of a new school year to occupy it. They’d only been living in a couple of rooms all summer. He’d felt like it was time for one of them to get over themselves and assess the rest of the house, and it wasn’t likely to be his mother.

He hadn’t been able to stomach most of it, just venturing far enough to feel what had been ruined, to establish which of his childhood memories had been blackened beyond repair and what rooms he could go in now without feeling sick.

Comfortingly, the inside of Hogwarts looks the same as it always has, though it feels different, tired, like the stone walls can still feel the cracks that have been so expertly repaired. The grounds are different, in a way he can’t quite put his finger on. He hadn’t really spent that much time out in them before, preferring to stick to the common room or the Quidditch pitch except for when he had to leave for outdoor classes, so he’s struggling to remember what’s new and what he’s just never noticed.

The view as he steps out of the main doors is reassuringly familiar, with the forest at the end of the long lawns and the lake to the left, the greenhouses to the right. The grass seem to stretch on longer than it had when he was a child, though that’s backwards.

He heads off to the left, sticking close to the castle walls. It takes him longer than he would have thought to loop them but it feels good to be outside. The sun’s bright in that unexpected, cold way it sometimes is at the end of the year, and the wind chills him enough to keep his head clear.

The back of the castle -- his side, as he’s already unconsciously started thinking of it -- really is pressed right up against the edge of the hills, the ground starting to slope upwards barely twenty feet from the stone walls. It’s sheltered, quieter out of the wind. Draco looks up at his own window but keeps his head forward as he passes it. If Potter sees him go by, he doesn’t make any effort to let know Draco know he’s there, and Draco carries on until he’s out on the bank, staring at the sky reflected so perfectly in the surface of the lake that the two are almost indistinguishable from one another.

 

///

 

It’s not a good night. Draco’s sleep has improved since the summer but it’s still hard sometimes. His brain won’t turn off, even when his body’s heavy and tired, and very time he closes his eyes he sees things he doesn’t want to. Even with the lamp on his desk glowing brightly, he’s scared of the dark on the back of his own eyelids.

He’d closed the window before he got into bed, the first time since he arrived, because he can feel a cold coming on, the back of his throat odd and tight when he wakes up in the morning, and he doesn’t want to make it worse. He’s regretting it now though, unable to find the energy to get up and open it again, or even to roll over and find his wand. The room feels stuffy and close without the outside air filtering in and it’s making him restless.

Still, he manages to drop off before the need to feel the chill on his face wins out over his exhaustion. He doesn’t even realise he’s fallen asleep until he’s jerked awake again by a sharp sound. He lies there, disorientated after barely being unconscious for ten minutes, heart pounding. The noise comes again; Draco blinks over at the window, then gets out of bed and opens it to find Potter staring up at him.

“Did you just throw that?”

Potter looks down at the small stone in his hand like he’s already forgotten it’s there. “Yeah. Er, it’s a muggle thing.”

“What, trying to break someone’s window?”

Potter laughs. It’s annoying. Draco’s annoyed, he was almost sleep.

“No, it’s a-- way to get someone’s attention, I guess.”

Draco blames his sleep-messed brain for the fact he almost tells Potter he’s never had to try in that regard, not where Draco’s concerned.

“I didn’t want to shout in case I woke anyone up,” Potter adds.

“What about waking me up?”

“Your light was on.”

“What if I sleep with the light on?”

Potter shakes his head, ducking it so that Draco only sees his smile for a split second before it’s hidden in shadow. “Are you always like this when you wake up?”

“I don’t know.” Draco shivers in his thin shirt and wraps his arms around himself. He’d have thought the cold would have woken him up some but it’s just making him want to get back into bed. “Look, did you want something, Potter?”

Potter seems to take a second to actually consider the question, which Draco takes as a sign that no, he hadn’t had any good reason to start lobbing things at the window. After a moment he shrugs. “Just thought you might not be able to sleep either.”

Draco sighs and rubs his eyes. “Well, I was.”

Potter holds his hands up, the rock dropping to the ground. “Sorry.”

He looks it too. Draco doubts Potter’s ever done or thought or said anything that wasn’t genuine in his whole life. “It’s fine.”

“I know it can be shit,” Potter says anyway, like Draco asked for an explanation. “I shouldn’t have assumed you’d be awake.”

“Potter, really.” The hairs on Draco’s arms are all standing on end in the cold air. “I said it was fine.”

Potter’s pulled his bottom lip into his mouth. Draco’s eyes have somehow picked that out in the darkness and zeroed in on it. “I guess I’ll--” he says with a vague gesture.

“Wake me up for no reason and then bugger off?”

“Yeah, apparently.”

“Ok.” Draco’s whole body feels tired. “Alright. I’m going back to bed.”

Potter looks up at the sky, at Draco, at his feet. “G’night.”

“Good night, Potter.”

 

///

 

Draco’s new bed is big -- not as huge as the one he has at home, but a good-sized double. The beds in the Slytherin dormitory had never felt too small, exactly, and they’d seemed to grow with the boys as they’d gotten older, but they’d definitely been built for one person. Probably some kind of deterrent, Draco assumes, not that it had ever stopped his dormmates.

He can lie crossways on his bed at the Manor with his arms over his head and still have all his limbs on the bed. When he does that here his feet hang off the end, weightless. It makes him feel weird, like someone’s going to grab his ankle or like his foot might just drop right off with nothing supporting it.

He’s lying like that, head turned towards the perpetually open window, when he hears someone call his name. It can only be Potter.

“What?” he asks, leaning out into the cold.

Potter’s looking up at him. “I was going to go for a walk.”

“It’s dark.”

Potter smiles like he’s said something funny. “I know.”

Draco stares at the sky. It’s clouded over, stars hidden so that the only light comes from the half-moon. “Ok. Why are you telling me this?”

“Thought you might want to come,” Potter says, casual, like that’s a completely normal thing for him to assume. Like they’ve spent any time together at all, really, in seven years.

“Oh.” Draco almost asks Potter why he’s being-- is friendly the word? “Um. No, actually. I think I’m alright.”

Potter shrugs easily. Draco watches him walk off in the direction of the lake until he disappears round the side of the castle.

 

///

 

“Is this going to become a thing?” Draco asks the following night, pushing his window open all the way before Potter can throw anything at it. He hadn’t been sitting there waiting or anything, it’s just that Potter has never been particularly subtle and Draco heard him walking around.

“Probably.” Potter shrugs up at him, unabashed.

Draco looks at his upturned face. “Aren’t you cold?”

“You ask a lot of questions,” Potter says, but he doesn’t sound bothered by it. And rightly so, honestly, seeing as he’s the one who keeps dragging Draco out of bed. There’s an odd sort of interest in his face, like he can’t figure Draco out. “But yeah, a bit.”

He lifts a hand and something flies into it. Draco might have been impressed at the show of wandless magic if he was at all surprised. He watches Potter pull the jumper over his head; it has a hood and looks a muted dark grey colour, but it’s difficult to tell in the darkness.

“Are you bored, or something?” The night is quiet, hardly any wind, the air sharp and cold against Draco’s face.

Potter’s face cracks into a small smile. “Told you. Can’t sleep.”

“Usually standing outside barefoot instead of lying inside in a _bed_ , is not conducive to sleeping, Potter. That might explain it.”

Potter’s eyes go all shiny and pleased, like this is what he was waiting for, like he really came out here just to hear Draco make sarcastic comments, so Draco carries on. “I mean, far be it from me to assume the _Chosen One’s_ nightly routine, but most people have to at least be _horizontal_ before they can drop off. And you apparently have such a high opinion of yourself that if you can’t sleep, no one can, so you’ve decided to drag me into it. I can stun you, if that might help?”

He’s laid it on thick, but it’s surprisingly fun to needle Potter again, without the embarrassing desperation that used to underlie all of Draco’s mocking.

It works -- Potter looks far from annoyed. His smile’s widened, teeth sunk into his lower lip again to try and contain it and his eyebrows have lifted in amusement. “Went a bit far there,” he says, eyebrows climbing even higher. “Bit over the top. Less believable.”

“I’m tired.” Draco scowls. “Makes me more dramatic.”

Potter laughs loud enough that a bird takes off from somewhere on the roof.

 

///

 

For some exasperating reason, Potter apparently doesn’t get the message about leaving Draco alone. Maybe it’s because Draco’d let him keep them up for another hour last night chatting about increasingly ridiculous ways to get Potter to fall asleep. It’d only been when Draco had unthinkingly suggested they find someone to tuck Potter in and Potter had blushed, visible even in the dark of well-past-midnight, that Draco’d had the sense to go back to bed, his eyes heavy and his skin wind-chilled. He’d slept right through until nearly midday this morning, waking from the remnants of a dream with a half-blocked nose and a confusingly warm feeling in his chest.

Potter had thrown a rock up at the unsurprisingly inconsiderate hour of half past midnight, when Draco had been considering a late-night bath before bed.

“You could just come up here, you know,” Draco sniffs as he fingers the glass of the window pane, searching for any cracks.

Potter stops levitating the stone he’d been making float several inches above his upturned palm and looks up at Draco, eyes widening behind his glasses.

“I just mean--” Draco huffs, pausing to pull his sleeves down over his hands. “It’s December. I’ll catch some awful cold if I spend another night hanging out of my window and it’ll be entirely your fault.”

Potter laughs, loud and incredulous and then stands back, hands shoved in his pockets. He seems to be assessing the wall underneath the window and Draco has about two seconds to process that before he strides forwards and gets a hand on the trellis that’s built onto the castle wall. It's new; Draco was surprised to see it that first night, but he likes the look of it against the brick, the weaving ivy and the small white flowers. It’s pretty and delicate and unlikely to hold Potter’s weight. Draco can’t watch; he’d meant the _stairs_ obviously, like any sane person would assume, but Potter’s already off the ground.

He sits back away from the window, legs crossed, until Potter appears, grinning stupidly.

“Hi,” he says and immediately loses his balance when he tries to prop himself up with his elbows.

Draco has no idea what to say. “Hello.”

Potter wobbles, pushes himself up on his hands so that his elbows are locked, forearms straining, fingers gripping tight onto the ledge until his knuckles go pale. “I don’t think this is very stable.”

Draco swallows. “No, I’d imagine not.”

“Smells good, though.”

Draco stares at him, framed against the stars outside. “Jasmine. Reminds me of home.”

Potter makes a neutral noise, something flashing so fast across his face at the mention of the Manor that Draco’s convinced he imagined it as soon as Potter’s expression smooths over again. He looks oddly-- right, there in Draco’s window.

“So.” Potter shifts again, letting his arms give out so that they’re folded on the ledge instead, feet, Draco assumes, finding purchase on the rickety trellis somewhere. He’s never still, Potter. He hasn’t been the whole time Draco’s known him. “This is your room.”

“It is,” Draco says and watches him look around, watches his eyes take in the bed and the bookshelves and the thick rug that Draco had shrunk down and brought over from his favourite parlour at home.

Potter makes that noise again. “We’re not very good at conversation, are we?”

Draco stares at him. “Excuse me if I’m not at full social capacity at” -- he glances at the clock on his bedside table -- “quarter to one in the morning.”

Potter laughs. Draco likes it when he does that and he looks down at his hands, folding them in his lap.

“Fair enough.” He shifts again. “Mine’s bigger.”

When Draco looks up he can just make out the way Potter’s cheeks have darkened. “I mean my room,” he clarifies unnecessarily. “I told them I didn’t need much but it’s nice, actually. I don’t like small spaces.”

Draco doesn’t know what to do when Potter tells him things like that. He didn’t ask, Potter just offers up piece of himself like Draco will know how to hold them in his head without going crazy.

“Mhm,” he says, noncommittal, belated. It’s a little overwhelming seeing Potter up close, something he hadn’t expected. They haven’t spoken without several metres of distance between them since Draco’s trial back in May, and his eyes catch on small details of Potter’s face: the way his glasses have pressed into the bridge of his nose, how surprisingly long his eyelashes are. Draco makes himself look away.

“It’s not much warmer in here than it is outside,” Potter accuses, eyes narrowing slightly.

Draco rolls his eyes. “At least this way I’m not straining my neck peering down at you.”

“What about _my_ neck?” Potter says, indignant, and then almost slips, maybe to make a point, because that seems like the kind of thing he would do, though Draco suspects it’s simply that his foothold’s not very secure.

“No one’s making you stay,” Draco says archly.

“You invited me in!”

“Well, I didn’t know if this was going to be one of your wake-Malfoy-up-and-piss-off-after-ten-minutes-for-no-reason kind of things, or whether you were planning on taking up more of my time. I can only pray for the former.”

Potter sticks his tongue out, which is such a non-response that Draco has no comeback.

“I didn’t wake you up,” Potter says after a moment. “You’re not in pajamas.”

Draco sighs long-sufferingly. “I was going to wash my hair.”

Potter almost throws his hands up at Draco’s exaggeratedly wistful tone but apparently remembers they’re the main thing keeping him secured and settles for rolling his eyes instead. “Don’t let me keep you,” he says, but ruins the exasperated tone with a look that Draco might call fond, on anyone else.

Draco gets up to find his toiletries as Potter starts to lower himself back down. “Don’t break your neck.”

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Potter says, flashing his teeth in an annoyingly charming smile, and climbs out of view.

 

///

 

The end of December sneaks up on Draco, though he’s not sorry to be leaving this year behind him. He wonders just how pathetic it is to spend the 31st alone in his room and decides he doesn’t much care. It’s not like there’s anyone to see him; McGonagall’s already told him most of the teachers have their own plans and he’s welcome to come or go as he pleases. He doesn’t want to be at home and going to France to see Pansy seems like too much of an effort, despite the fact he can read that she wants him there in every line of her letters.

He keeps having these dreams where he walks to the very edge of the Hogwarts grounds, right up to the edge of the wards, which are always a visible wall of shimmering magic. When he steps through them the world dissolves into white and he’s stuck there, suspended in nothing, until he wakes up. They’re a lot better than the kinds of dreams he usually has but they scare him in a different way, like they might be real and if he tries to leave the school it'll be different when he gets back. Or, worse, that it’ll be like he remembers it from before and he’ll find that the castle he’s starting to relearn now will turn out to be something he imagined all along.

“I don’t even really _like_ parties,” Potter grumbles at him on the morning of the 30th. He’s heading back down south to see his friends tomorrow and Draco’s privately relieved. If he wasn’t, he might have come and bothered Draco, and there’s something about spending the end of the year together that feels intimate. Draco used to love New Years, more than Christmas even, some years. Various combinations of his friends had always come over to the Manor whilst all of their parents were off socialising. When they were fifteen Pansy had made herself sick drinking most of a bottle of champagne and vomited on the rug in the third sitting room. Draco’s own small glass had made him dizzy enough and she and Blaise had kissed him, giggling, on either cheek when it turned midnight.

“It’ll be good to see everyone, though.” Potter’s not really speaking loud enough for Draco to hear him all the way up here, but the day is so still and quiet that his voice carries. Often Draco doesn’t actually need to say anything; Potter can have entire conversations with himself, and Draco suspects he probably does, even when Draco’s not there. Potter does everything out loud.

“What on earth are you going to _wear_?” Draco drawls, piling on the sarcasm.

Potter flips two fingers at him.

 

///

 

At two minutes to midnight, Draco watches the clock on his desk tick down and hopes his mother’s ok. Someone lets off fireworks somewhere when the two hands meet up, he can hear them echo, but they must be over in the direction of Hogsmeade because he can’t see anything out of his window except for the star-filled sky, even when he turns his bedroom light off and leans there, cheek against the cold glass, watching.

They go on for ages, the noises bursting in the quiet night. Draco thinks about going to bed, thinks about opening the window properly and climbing down so he could try and see them, thinks about last year when he’d sat, miserable and terrified, in the Slytherin common room and wondered if he’d make it through another year.

There’s a dull thud and something that sound likes a quiet curse and then Potter’s there, of course, three floors below. Draco watches him come into view; he must have climbed out of his own window.

Clearly he hasn’t spotted Draco, which is fair enough seeing as Draco’s sitting there in the dark. His eyes are on the ground, scanning for rocks to assault the window with, probably. It makes Draco want to laugh, the sight of him bent over, hands in his pockets, slightly unbalanced. He hadn’t felt like laughing in months before he came back to school.

Potter finally straightens up and Draco can see his tongue poking out in concentration as his arm goes back, fist clenched, shoulder flexing as he throws.

Draco opens the window and catches the rock before it can smack him in the face. It’s pathetic how good it feels, to close his hand around the smooth stone, to relish in how his reflexes are still there, instinctive, despite the fact he hasn’t been able to get on a broom since he was on the back of Potter’s.

“Nice catch.” Potter laughs, sounding disproportionately pleased that Draco’s appeared. He looks good, not just in his jeans and t-shirt, but happy. Draco hadn’t registered the subtle tension in his face this past week until he looks down now and sees it gone.

“Good party?”

He’s drunk, too, Draco can tell, or tipsy at least. There’s something looser about his movements, the never-ending shift of his body less anxious. He has another rock in his hand and he throws it up in the air and catches it, shrugs, grins. “Yeah. Really good, yeah.”

_Yeah_. Something about the way he says it, low, makes Draco’s limbs feel looser too, heavy and languid.

“Not good enough to stay long past midnight.” Draco quirks an eyebrow, unsure why he’s said that. Potter doesn’t seem sure either, though the smile doesn’t leave his face.

He yawns, covering his mouth with the back of his hand. “No, it was fun. I just felt like coming home.”

That makes Draco’s neck feel hot, weirdly. Obviously Potter had meant the castle, not-- anything else.

“What’d you do?” Potter asks.

Draco waves a hand, leans against the window frame. “This and that.”

“Right,” Potter smiles. “So nothing, then.”

Draco tries for a frown but he doubts the expression holds long enough for Potter to even notice it.

There’s quiet for a moment, Draco watching Potter scuff one foot on the grass. He seems unable to shake the grin from his face, smile firmly in place even with his eyes fixed downwards.

“1999,” he sighs after a moment, fingers splaying outwards in an odd, half-joking sort of ridiculous jazz-hands move. Draco’s shocked into laughing.

Potter’s grin gets bigger, if that’s possible. “We made it.”

He says _we_ like there’s an _us_ , like they were on the same side. Maybe they were, in the end, when it mattered, or maybe Draco’s feeling uncharacteristically self-forgiving because, despite his successful efforts to see the year off alone, Potter’s still managed to be the first person Draco sees in this new one, and that seems significant.

“Happy New Year, Potter,” Draco says, and another round of fireworks goes off somewhere behind them.

 

///

 

The next time Draco sees Potter he’s only just got back from the Prefect’s bathroom. People liked to talk about starting a new year how one means to go on, but Draco’s always been a big believer in spending as much of the first week of January as possible either in bed, or in a hot bath. Potter was at the window when Draco came in, warm and damp from the water, and he’d nodded in greeting, watching Draco dry his hair with a charm as he pulled himself over the sill and then sat himself there.

Draco’s half-heartedly spread a couple of his books out on his desk, thinking it might be time to start doing some actual work now they’re this side of New Years, but he’s not feeling particularly motivated.

Potter’s not really helping his concentration either, propped sideways in the window, one leg either side so that he’s half-in, half-out, chatting inanely about things like: “It’s weird that everyone’s going to be spread all over the castle, isn’t it?”

“I suppose.” Honestly, Draco’s gotten used to sleeping alone over the past year and he barely remembers what it was like to be in a dormitory with four other people. Back when the Manor had been overrun with Death Eaters he’d taken great comfort in being able to pull the hangings shut around his bed, letting the silencing charms interwoven into the fabric settle around him, falling asleep in absolute quiet. Any small noise can wake him now.

“I find it hard to sleep alone.”

Draco hums, eyes flicking up from his Transfiguration text to Potter’s profile.

“It’s nice to have privacy, though, I guess. And McGonagall said we’ll still be allowed in our House common rooms, once everyone’s back. I wonder what they’re doing about classes. Reckon we’ll be in with the year below?”

Draco looks at the side of his face until he turns and looks back. “What?”

“Were you always this annoying? If I hadn’t been there I would’ve assume you’d _talked_ the bloody Dark Lord to death.”

Potter laughs and pushes a piece of hair out his face. “Sorry,” he grins. “There wasn’t really anyone around for months, and now you’re here. Guess you’re stuck dealing with me.”

Draco focusses back on his work, ignoring the warmth in his chest.

 

///

 

It’s only because he gets used to Potter being around and providing a steady stream of mundane background conversation that Draco notices something is wrong with him on Sunday afternoon. He’s actually inside Draco’s room properly for once, but he’s restless, pacing up and down, prodding at things on Draco’s shelves. Draco had been trying to do some Arithmancy because it’s been months and he’s out of practice, work spread out on the floor at the foot of his bed, but Potter’s disquiet is infectious.

“Can you not?” he snaps, when Potter accidentally knocks a photo of Draco and his parents to the ground.

He’s still short with Potter a lot of the time, because it’s basically part of his personality after this many years, but mostly Potter laughs it off. Today he seems to barely hear Draco.

“Potter?”

Draco watches him pick the frame up. He snorts as he looks at it, putting it back where it was. It’s a mean noise, and it plucks at some angry instinct in Draco.

“Potter.”

“How _are_ the parents?” Potter says, like Draco hasn’t spoken. “I’ve been meaning to ask.”

Draco narrows his eyes, but Potter’s not looking at him. “You don’t actually care.”

Potter makes that ugly sound again. It’s not a disagreement.

“Why ask, then?” Draco bites out. It makes Potter turn around, the sharp edge to his words.

His nostrils flare for a minute but then he sighs, seeming to deflate. He comes over and sits heavily on the floor next to Draco.

“Sorry I’m being so--” he waves a hand and then clenches it into a loose fist in mid-air, letting it fall with a noise of frustration. “ I don’t know.”

Draco feels the fight go out of him too, overcome with an unwelcome urge to reassure Potter. “It’s fine,” he says, voice breaking between the two words. “I thought, actually, you might,” and then stops, swallows once.

That gets Potter’s attention. “What?”

Draco sighs and stretches his legs out. “Be more like this. More often, I mean. You’re surprisingly well adjusted most of the time.” That and forgiving. More accepting than Draco’d ever dared hope for.

He can feel Potter’s eyes on the side of his face as he huffs a laugh. “I’ve had half a year to process.”

“So have I,” Draco says, and the ending of that sentence hangs obvious and unsaid, the sarcastic _and look how well I’m doing._ He grimaces at the wall opposite.

Potter’s hand twitches against his thigh, like he was going to reach out and thought better of it. “I had help. People to talk to.”

Draco doesn’t want to have this conversation. He can deal with Potter being moody and distracted but they’re not going to sit here and talk about how Draco has no one to lean on.

“Are you doing Potions this year?”

It’s not what Potter’s expecting but he lets the change of subject slide, his body relaxing minutely. They’re not touching at all -- Draco can feel it in the centimetres of space between their shoulders.

“No,” Potter breathes. “I never liked it, even in sixth year. I know I’m supposed to be thinking about what I should do after school, but I though, you know-- fuck it. I want to enjoy my last year here.”

“I doubt we’ll see much of each other, then.” Draco’s dropped Care of Magical Creatures, the only other lesson he shared with Potter.

Potter smiles, a small one, but Draco feels a strange sense of accomplishment anyway. “Oh, I don’t know,” he says. “I know where you sleep.”

 

///

 

Draco wakes for the second time in as many weeks to a tapping sound at his window. When he sits up, Potter’s face is right there behind the glass, small grin in place. It’s a lot to take in when Draco has quite literally just woken up. He gestures to the window, open just enough to let a tiny, icy breeze in, and wiggles his eyebrows until Draco fumbles around for his wand, shoots a spell to send it flying open properly and collapses back onto his pillows before he can think better of it, pulling the duvet back up over him as cold air follows Potter into the room.

To his credit, he’s clearly trying to be quiet but it’s dark and he trips over Draco’s shoes on his way to the bed, catches himself heavily with one hand on the lump that is Draco’s hip under the duvet.

“Sorry,” he says, and Draco sees him wince because he might actually be incapable of whispering and it comes out quite loud. “Sorry.”

He’s on Draco’s side of the bed, standing there looking down at him and Draco absolutely refuses to move over to make room, this side’s all nice and warm from where he was happily asleep in it before Potter turned up, he can bloody well go round. Except he toes off his shoes and climbs up onto the bed instead, stepping right over Draco. His socked feet make the mattress dip and Draco stares blearily up at him, rolling over and wondering if maybe he’s still asleep and Harry Potter isn’t really falling into his bed, wriggling around until he’s under the covers, his head on Draco’s other pillow. Draco normally gravitates towards the centre of the bed, body curled inward, so their faces end up quite close.

“Your mattress is so soft.” Potter pulls a face.

“And that’s a bad thing,” Draco says after a short pause where he tries to decide if replying will make Potter shut up sooner or only encourage him. His voice comes out all tired and sleep-rough.

Potter laughs softly, face different without his glasses on. “I just meant it’s difficult to balance on.”

“Funnily enough I don’t spend much time trying to walk across it.”

Potter hums. “I always figured you were a firm mattress kind of bloke.”

“Potter.” Draco closes his eyes. “Shut up.”

He falls asleep to the sound of Potter’s steady breathing.

 

///

 

“I’m going on a walk again,” Potter tells him far too early the next morning, the sun barely up and the grass wet under Potter’s feet. He gestures behind him at the stretch of sloping hill.

Draco had woken to an empty bed and a warm room where Potter had shut the window tight on his way out, but he’d barely had ten minutes to himself before there were rocks at his window.

Draco covers a yawn with his hand and squints down at Potter. “It’s not dark.”

Potter smiles. “Does that mean--?”

“Let me get dressed.”

It takes him fifteen minutes to get ready, ten to force himself to leave his hair alone and five to realise he doesn’t really have the right kind of shoes.

“I don’t have the right kind of shoes,” he tells Potter when he steps out of the main doors. Potter’s turned, facing away from the forest, one foot bouncing like he’s eager to be off. He glances down at Draco’s shoes and shrugs, smiles. “I don’t think it’ll matter too much.”

Draco doubts Potter’s done much more walking up mountains than he has but he follows him anyway.

 

///

 

They’re up high enough that the path has all but disappeared when Potter stops and stares out over the edge. Draco feels like he can see for miles, the castle hidden by the steep incline, and the cloud that had surrounded them halfway up long since dissipated into clear sky.

“It’s weird we never did this before,” Potter says, voice snatched away by the wind. “All those years living with this on our doorstep.”

Draco shrugs, tucking his hands into his armpits. “There was enough to occupy us at the school.”

Potter hums in agreement, eyes still fixed on the view.

“Can you really think of any Professor who would have been prepared to take a horde of twelve-year-olds halfway up a mountain?” he asks when Potter stays quiet.

Potter laughs. It’s a surprise -- it still is every time Draco gets that response. “Muggles do it.”

“What, take their children up mountains?”

“No, I mean-- well, they take them places. Trips away from school. Or at least make them run around outside for a couple of hours a week.”

Draco remembers reading something about that. They’re making him take a NEWT in Muggle Studies this year and he’s been doing some studying before classes begin, half out of embarrassment at how behind he’s going to be, half out of a weird, angry curiosity that’s taken hold of him.

“I was talking about this with Hermione the other day,” Potter is saying, missing or ignoring Draco’s flinch at the mention of Granger. “There’s really no like-- PE or anything in magical education. Unless you play Quidditch.”

Draco’s not entirely sure what PE is. His warming charm has flickered out again and the January wind is biting. It’s a lot less green up here than he’d been expecting, the hills stretching brown and grey in every direction.

Potter turns to him. “You’re cold.”

“No shit.” Draco watches the wind pick at Potter’s hair, tangling it further around his head. “Are we lost?”

Potter grins. “Not really.”

“Not really? What’s that supposed to mean?” Draco can’t feel his toes and he’s not sure if it’s the temperature or if his shoes are pinching.

Potter mutters something that Draco doesn’t catch and jerks his head back the way they came. “C’mon,” he says. “We’ll lose the light soon.”

Draco hadn’t even thought of that. It gets dark so early in winter it feels like his life is made up of long nights with snatches of pale sunlight in between. Nice little metaphor, that.

Potter moves past him to lead the way back down and for a second Draco’s rendered unsteady by the wave of heat that washes over him at the movement. He knows Potter runs hot but that had seemed excessive, until he realises Potter’s cast his own warming charm over Draco.

It holds all the way down to the castle. Draco can still taste Potter’s magic around him when he’s back in his room.

 

///

 

Friday is a bad day. Draco wakes late and annoyed, somehow both restless and unable to find the energy to do anything, exhausted but unable to sleep.

Potter pokes his head when it’s just starting to get dark. Draco’s in bed, where he’s been all day.

“Alright?”

“No,” Draco says, honestly. “Feel rather shockingly awful, actually.”

Potter gives him a weird look and Draco can’t find the energy to care.

“Ok.” He stays where he is, outside, leaning on the window frame, maybe sensing that Draco’s not in the mood. “Why?”

“Sometimes I just do, Potter. Do I need a reason?”

“No, I just.” Potter can’t really shrug with his arms supporting his weight like that but he tries anyway. “Thought I’d ask.”

Draco says nothing. When he lifts his head to look properly at Potter it hurts his neck.

“Want me to go?”

Draco’s nod surprises him and he almost regrets it when Potter returns it and lowers himself down out of sight. Draco lets his head fall back and stares at the ceiling.

Potter’s shut the window behind him and it makes Draco want to scream, weirdly, so he gets up and goes over to it, blood rushing to his head after being horizontal for so many hours. He shoves it back open a bit and lets himself look down for a second, but Potter’s already disappeared back inside.

 

///

 

“It’s raining,” Potter says unnecessarily the next day, appearing again in Draco’s window, damp and smiling. Draco had pushed it all the way open that morning to let the smell of the rain in, so the sound and feel of it could permeate the quiet room. He’d woken up feeling more settled and he’s been lying on top of his bed all morning, half-sleeping, half-reading. He’d never been in the Muggle Studies section of the library before, but he’d been looking for a textbook the other day and stumbled across a whole shelf of Muggle literature, undetectably extended by the look of it. He’d had to lighten the pile of books with a charm just to get them all checked out and upstairs into his room.

Potter pauses in the window, fixing Draco with an indecipherable look. Draco almost squirms. It’s the domesticity of it -- Draco’s embarrassed. He’s been at boarding school half his life, he and Potter even slept in the same bed that one, unmentioned time, and yet Potter seeing him curled up like this makes him feel vulnerable and weird. He’s very aware of his socked feet.

The moment passes and Potter’s eyes fall on the cover of Draco’s book as he hooks a leg over the sill, transferring his weight to his other foot. “Oh. I like that one.”

“You’ve read Shakespeare?”

Potter looks at him deadpan for a second before pulling his glasses off his face to clean them on the bottom of his t-shirt. “I didn’t like it the first time.” He slumps down until his back is pressed against the wall under the window. Draco has to put his legs down flat so he can still see him. “I thought they were so annoying. Dramatic.”

Draco says nothing. He hasn’t finished the book yet, though it’s not hard to guess where it’s going.

“But I think I get it a little better now.” Potter rubs at his nose. “They’re just kids, really. Not their fault what they were born into or what-- what’s expected of them.”

Merlin. Draco pointedly opens the book again, tilting it the smallest amount after a minute to squint at Potter over the top of it. Potter doesn’t seem bothered that Draco hasn’t responded and has resorted to ignoring him; he’s sitting with his head back against the wall, staring into space, one hand pulling unconsciously at a loose thread in the rug. Draco sighs and throws his copy of The Tempest over, rolling onto his side and burying himself back in the story so he can’t watch Potter’s reaction.

 

///

 

It keeps raining for days.

Potter seems unperturbed, still climbing up the side of the castle and dripping all over Draco’s floor.

Draco looks at the dark spots on the wood and pushes himself up a bit on his elbows.

“Have we not graduated to knocking on my door yet?”

Potter shrugs with one shoulder. “Tradition, isn’t it?”

“If you slip off on your way up, I take no responsibility,” Draco says, but he still lets Potter come over and collapse next to him on the bed.

“I wish it would snow.”

“Really?” As much as Draco likes the way snow paints the world clean and white, he’d rather it get warm again. It’s always been easier for him to get out of bed if he can feel the sun on his face, even before the war.

Potter’s staring out of the window. “It never feels like Christmas until it snows.”

“Christmas was two weeks ago, Potter.”

“Yeah, I know, and it felt weird.” He slips slightly against the headboard, sliding down the bed a bit and pushing himself back up with a hand on the mattress that comes within inches of making contact with Draco’s upper arm.

Draco laughs at him. “I don’t think you can really blame the weather for that.”

Potter smiles, head tilted down. It’s an odd angle for Draco, staring up at the underside of Potter’s face from one side. “No, you’re probably right.”

“It’s been known to happen.”

Potter rolls his eyes. Draco tracks the movement and then watches as his face shifts, eyes softening, mouth tightening. “It didn’t feel right with people missing.”

“I know,” Draco says without thinking. “Same with me. Just the two of us.. it felt weird.”

Potter goes still. Draco’s body tenses too, against his will, as he realises what he’s said. He knows Potter feels it and he waits, unsure what to do.

Potter shifts, swinging his legs off the side of the bed so he’s sitting facing away from Draco. Draco has a horrible urge to reach out and touch his back.

“I just meant--” he says, swallowing. “I know it’s not the same.”

“Yeah, it’s not the same.”

“Ok.”

“It’s not the fucking same at all.”

“ _Ok_ , Potter, I get it.” Draco pulls his knees up and wraps his arms around them, stares at the rain outside and tries hard not to miss his dad. He’s not surprised that it doesn’t work -- he’s been failing at it for months.

“Ok?” Potter sounds pissed. “God, why are you so--” he stops and breathes out, careful, controlled. Draco glances at the curl of his spine, hunched over under his t-shirt, and quickly away again.

“What?” he asks, feeling the bite as he presses his fingernails into his upper arms through his jumper. “So what, Potter?”

“You don’t fight back anymore. You’re so.. _agreeable_ .” He says it like he’d pronounced _soft_ , back when he’d been talking about Draco’s mattress, only worse, meaner.

Draco’s laugh gets stuck in his throat and he shakes his head, chin atop his folded arms. Potter won’t look at him; he can’t help looking at Potter. “You want to have an argument?”

“No.” He sighs again, dropping his hands away from his face. “I don’t want to talk about your dad.”

“Nor do I much, really. Not with you.”

“You brought him up.”

“He’s my _dad_.” Draco could get angry, it’d be so easy. He’d been angry a lot right after the trials, a whole, long, overheated summer of fury and frustration. Knowing that his family deserved punishment and hating the Wizengamot for tearing it apart were not mutually exclusive feelings. “You don’t know--”

“No,” Potter says, voice flat. “I don’t,” and then gets up and leaves, using the actual door of Draco’s room for the first time all year.

 

///

 

On Tuesday Draco wakes up to see the rain has stopped and closes the window. He doesn’t have any Pepper Up and he hasn’t seen Madam Pomfrey anywhere, so it’s really about time he stops tempting that cold that’s been threatening for weeks.

He spends the morning moving all the furniture in his room, something he used to do periodically back at the Manor, shifting and rearranging whenever he’d felt like it. Back then he’d used magic. Now he drags the desk over by hand so it’s under the window, shoves his bed further along the wall so that he can see the tiny triangle of lake in the distance even when he’s lying on it. The noise of the furniture scraping on the floor and the pull in his shoulders feels necessary. He has to stop for a second halfway through, breathing heavily, and he almost, ridiculously, wants to just leave the bed right where it is, blocking the entire doorway.

 

///

 

Potter climbs through his window two nights later, some kind of metal flask tucked under his arm and two mugs in the opposite hand. It seems impossible he’s made it up the side of the castle carrying all that.

“It’s mulled wine,” he says before Draco can ask, crawling onto the newly-positioned desk and then wobbling off it.

Draco sits up properly where he’d been slumped sideways in the room’s only armchair. “Didn’t we have a conversation about Christmas being weeks ago?”

Potter grumbles and shuts the window. “If you don’t want any,” he starts, but he’s already pouring it out. It must have been under a stasis charm; Draco can see steam curling off of it.

“Don’t spill it on my bed, for fucks’ sake,” Draco says when Potter sends a mug sailing over to him with a flick of his hand. Potter mutters something and then swears quietly when he trips over one of the shoes that Draco really should have learned to put away by now.

He watches as Potter sits on the floor, back against the bed. He seems grumpy, a little exasperated by Draco already, or maybe still angry from before. Draco would never admit it out loud, but he almost prefers Potter like this. Their dynamic doesn’t really makes sense to him without a little animosity and though the memory of their almost-argument the other night sits heavy in his stomach, he has to admit he’s found it weird, them getting along so well. He’d been expecting something like that to happen sooner.

Potter’s quiet as he raises the mug to his mouth. It unnerves Draco; usually he can’t get Potter to shut up. He sips his own drink just for something to do with his hands and immediately pulls a face.

“This wine is awful.”

Potter frowns consideringly and takes another large gulp. “Tastes good to me.”

“That’s because you don’t know anything about wine.” Draco sips again in what he imagines is a refined manner. The metallic taste is less noticeable the more he drinks, and it’s warm if nothing else. “And they’ve thrown a load of spices in there and let it mull, so. Only a distinguished palette would be able to tell if the wine underneath was of decent quality.”

“Are you drunk?” Potter suddenly sounds delighted. “You’ve had about four sips.”

Draco scowls and says nothing, determinedly ignoring the way the tension in the room has lessened already.

Potter chuckles into his cup. “Mull,” he snorts.

“It’s _called_ mulled wine, Potter.”

“Yeah, I know, I just-- never heard someone use it in verb form like that.”

Draco’s quite impressed Potter knows what a verb is. He hardly seems the type.

“I don’t really drink much at all, usually,” Potter says on a sigh. He’s barely halfway through his own glass and he looks flushed. Draco doesn’t drink very often either, but he’s not much in the mood for a heart to heart over their failure to behave like normal teenagers.

“I sort of tried the whole clubbing thing over summer,” -- Potter pronounces the word _clubbing_ like it’s foreign and suppresses a hiccup, rolls his head back against the bed  -- “but it always stopped being fun after a couple of hours.” He frowns. “I don’t like feeling out of control, I don’t think.”

Draco’s head is starting to feel warm and muffled, like someone’s wrapped something around it. He uncurls a leg, pokes a foot into Potter’s shoulder, gentle. Potter rocks sideways anyway. “Why do you do that?”

“Do what?” Potter looks up at him, bewildered.

“Tell me things like that. Tell me anything at all, whilst we’re on the subject.” Draco laughs, once, curling his legs back under him.

“I don’t know.” He sounds like he’s genuinely never thought about it before. “It’s easy.”

“Easy,” Draco repeats.

Potter lifts a shoulder. “Yeah, I guess. It just sort of comes out around you.”

“Maybe because I’m the only one _here_.” It’s not really a joke.

Potter shakes his head. “No, I don’t think so.”

 

///

 

The flask is empty and Draco’s sitting cross-legged on top of his desk, right shoulder pressed heavily into the window frame.

Potter had gone down to get a jumper because the night’s cold and by the time Draco had managed to process the potential idea of Potter wearing his clothes he’d missed his chance to actually offer one of his own. Potter’s back now, in his usual position, elbows on the window ledge and feet on the trellis.

“It wasn’t like this before,” he’s saying, indicating the trellis below him with a jerk of his chin. “Neville put it up over the summer when they were working on the grounds and it had all sorts on it -- roses mostly, I think. Everything died when it got colder.”

Draco doesn’t know why Potter’s telling him this but he’s not really paying attention so it hardly matters. He’s never cared much about Herbology, much to his mother’s despair. If he concentrates he can feel where Potter’s breath hits his own face, cooled by the time it reaches Draco, but still faintly spicy, his mouth wine-dark. Draco’s never going to be able to drink mulled wine again without thinking of Potter, which admittedly he only ever does about once a year, but it’s the principle of the thing.

“It only started blooming again when you-- er, after Christmas, I mean.”

“Mhm.” All these years spent watching Potter and Draco somehow never noticed his slightly crooked front tooth. It’s a minuscule thing, a tiny overlap, but Draco can’t look away.

“I wasn’t expecting it, that first night. Suddenly it had all these flowers again and then you were there in the window, which was, you know, a whole other-- surprise.”

“Did you not think I was coming back?” Draco’s curious.

“I hadn’t thought about it.” Potter shifts. Draco wonders if he can feel how Draco’s eyes keep focussing on his mouth. “And I didn’t expect anyone until term started.”

Draco hums again. He’s tired, in that slow, comforting way. It’s late; he doesn’t know long they’ve been up talking. He should probably go to bed soon, or he’ll fall asleep and tip right over the edge of the sill.

Even thinking about it makes him sway slightly for a moment, the distance between he and Potter shortening dangerously. Potter clears his throat and Draco blinks slowly.

There’s a pause and then-- Potter’s face is very cold. Even his lips are cold where they press closed-mouth against Draco’s, though Draco suspects it’d be warm if he parted them. Draco’s not sure if he wants that. He already feels unsteady and he’s not the one hanging onto the outside of the castle three floors up.

They separate and Potter’s eyes open, wide behind his glasses. He looks lovely lit from above by the moonlight.

“Oh,” Draco breathes, stupidly, into the space between them.

“Er,” Potter says, and then evidently forgets where he is because he steps backwards into thin air.

 

///

 

“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the Hospital wing?”

Draco’s never been in Potter’s room before. He was right -- it’s bigger than Draco’s but surprisingly less red than he might have assumed. It’d taken a shaky three minutes for Draco to climb down the side of the castle to see if his panicked cushioning charm had actually done what it was supposed to and when his feet had reached solid ground Potter had been lying there looking up at the sky, dazed but seemingly intact.

“No,” he says now, rubbing the back of his neck. It’s a habit of his so Draco can’t tell if he’s in pain or not. “It’s fine, honestly. Sorry.”

Draco snorts at him. Why he thinks he needs to apologise for falling thirty feet, Draco has no idea.

“Really.” Potter smiles, sheepish and quiet. “I didn’t mean to-- you know.”

Oh. Draco feels his face heat.

“No!” Potter says again, louder. Draco forces himself to meet Potter’s eye, though his expression is uncomfortably earnest and it makes Draco’s stomach tense up. “I didn’t-- I meant to do _that_ .” He goes red. “Well, not meant to, I just sort of-- did, without thinking about it, but I _wanted_ to is what I.. meant. You were staring at my mouth.” He rubs his face with both hands and braces his elbows on his knees, speaking into his fingers. “I didn’t plan on falling out of the window.”

“Right.”

“Sorry.”

“Stop saying that.” Draco sits down on the bed. He wishes Potter would move his hands away from his face.

“Sorry,” Potter says again and Draco can tell he’s smiling even if he can’t see it.

“Potter.”

“Mhm?”

Draco’s hands are gentle where they close around Potter’s wrists and tug his hands down. The skin under Draco’s fingers is hot, Potter’s glasses slightly fogged up from where he’s been breathing into his hands.

His mouth is warmer this time, especially when Draco parts his lips and tilts his head, gets Potter to open up too until he’s leaning back against the footboard of his bed, Draco bent into him. They’ve both got their hands to themselves and it strikes Draco as funny, suddenly, just their mouths touching and nothing else, and once he’s thought that he can’t stop thinking about how this entire thing is funny, Potter kissing him and then falling off the side of the castle and Draco bringing him in here and sitting him down and kissing him right back.

Potter’s nose is still cold from outside when Draco tries to pull back and bumps his own against it.

“Oh,” Potter says, a delayed echo, face breaking into a smile so wide it actually makes Draco’s face ache.

“Don’t fall off the bed,” Draco says.

 

///

 

“Hi,” Potter says on Saturday morning, clambering through the window onto Draco’s desk. He presses his mouth distractedly to Draco’s cheek in greeting and Draco freezes. Potter’s always touching him now and he’s not used to it. It’s like he’s channelled all his restless, fidgety energy into getting his hands on Draco whenever possible, now that he thinks he’s allowed.

He notices the tension, even though Draco relaxes almost instantly, and he laughs at Draco’s frown, kisses his face again. Draco’s quill falls out of his hand, Potter sitting right on top of the parchment he’d just been writing on.

Potter’s still laughing, though it’s muffled because he’s holding Draco’s head still and his hands are sort of covering Draco’s ears a bit. He kisses Draco’s cheek again, then the other, his forehead, even his nose. Draco can feel the skin bloom pink everywhere his mouth touches and he almost wants to squirm out of reach, except the smile on Potter’s face is difficult to look away from.

“You’re very-- flusterable,” Potter grins, pulling back but keeping Draco’s head bracketed in his hands.

“I don’t think that’s a word.”

Potter ignores him. “You always were, now I think about it. Was never difficult to get you riled up.”

Draco gets his hands around Potter’s wrists, a little tighter than necessary because of the teasing and his evident lack of grasp on the English language. He’s noticed himself doing it a lot since that first time; he likes feeling the pulse beat under the skin and he’s not about to do anything so ridiculous as hold Potter’s hand. This is close enough.

“Look who’s talking,” Draco shoots back, flipping Potter’s hands over so he can stroke at the thin skin with his thumbs and watch Potter’s face go slack, note-taking forgotten.

 

///

 

January trips forward past its halfway point and suddenly the rest of the school will be back before the end of the week. Draco’s dreading it, and not only for the reasons he was when he first got here. Those anxieties over how people will react to seeing him are still there, only they’re mixed up in this new thing with Potter.

Draco’s used to the routine, is all: no classes, going where he pleases, studying when he wants. At night it feels like he and Potter are the only ones here, that the school is something secret and theirs. The castle’s been here long before they were born and if it’s survived this past year, he has no doubt it'll be around for generations to come, but still, Draco feels irrationally wary about having to share it.

“I suppose you’re excited to see your friends again,” he tells Potter, the pair of them curled facing each other in the centre of Draco’s bed.

Potter grins like he can’t help himself, thinking about his friends. It’s nice, because Potter’s smile always makes Draco feel nice, but there’s a twinge in Draco’s chest. He doesn’t know if anyone from Slytherin is coming back for a repeat year.

“Yeah,” Potter says. “It’ll be weird, though. Everyone back.”

One of his hands absentmindedly strokes up and down Draco’s shin.

“I’ll have to start _Protego_ -ing myself in the corridors.” Draco keeps his tone light.

Potter frowns but wisely decides against arguing. Draco won’t allow him to be some kind of righteous protector, or whatever he’s imagining.

“People will be nice,” Potter says anyway, because he can’t not, then pulls a face. “Not nice, I mean, but. You have every right to be here.”

Draco smiles at him. He doesn’t agree, but he lets himself hope it might be ok. It’s easier to believe with Potter right there.

 

///

 

The morning of the Welcome Feast is freezing and sunlit. Draco lies in bed finishing _Romeo and Juliet_ , which he’s been neglecting in favour of schoolwork and Potter, and debates the merits of attending. They’ll send food up for him if he doesn’t, but he knows he probably should. It feels too weird not to go, and also like some sort of test to prove to himself that he can do this, like if he skips the first thing that makes him feel uncomfortable he’s setting himself up for a year of failure.

Putting his robes on feels strange, after months of not wearing them. He waits long enough that he knows everyone will have arrived and filtered into the Great Hall, sitting on his bed listening to the noise of the castle slowly filling up again.

Every step down from his room feels like an effort. He should have asked Potter, they could have-- but no, that wouldn’t have made it any better.

Heads turn as he enters, but he’s ready for them.

His table is fairly full considering he was barely expecting anybody from his house to return. They’ll be getting some first years too, he assumes, unless the lot of them are so terrified of ending up Slytherin that the hat sends them elsewhere. He doesn’t spot many faces from his own year as he walks, of course, but that’s unsurprising, until his feet have automatically carried him to where he always used to sit and--

“What are you doing here?”

Blaise smirks at him.  “The same thing everyone else is, I imagine.”

Draco’s known Blaise for over a decade, long enough to read the relief in the lifting of the corners of his mouth, the almost invisible apprehension and the genuine, if well-hidden, warmth at seeing Draco again.

“You could have written and told me, you dramatic bastard.” Draco drops onto the bench opposite him, trying not to notice that Blaise is sitting in his usual position, leaving Draco to take the side of the table facing the rest of the room.

“Oh, we both know you love dramatics, Dray, don’t be stupid.” It’s an old nickname, something Draco hasn’t been called since the start of sixth year and it makes warmth flood, rusty and unexpected, into his chest. Blaise’s smirk slips into something closer to a real smile and Draco can’t help but grin back. Every cold stare he’d felt on the back of his head when he’d walked in suddenly feels a little easier to deal with.

The doors open then, and McGonagall enters with a gaggle of children behind her, all of them looking pink cheeked and shivering from the cold. Draco supposes they’re lucky the lake hadn’t frozen over completely.

"I suppose you always liked an entrance," he tells Blaise.

When he looks over at the Gryffindor table Potter’s looking at him, but that’s not anything new.

 

///

 

Draco gets ready for bed with a strange sense of deja vu that night. He’d followed Blaise to his new room in one of the towers after dinner, noted it was much the same as his own, and they’d talked for almost an hour. It would've felt like a normal first night back, if not for him leaving at the end of it instead of climbing into a bed next to Blaise’s.

He gets his pajamas on and sits on the end of his bed, not even pretending to himself that he’s not waiting. After five minutes Potter’s there at the window.

“Hi.”

Draco leans back on his arms, the vee of his only half-buttoned pajama shirt slipping enough to show a bit of collar bone. Potter’s eyes flick to it immediately. They haven’t-- everything is still very new and Draco’s scared but he thinks, soon, maybe. “Hi.”

“I could--” Potter starts, grinning, but Draco shakes his head, ducking it and looking at Potter from under his eyelashes. He laughs when Potter frowns and makes to climb in.

Draco goes over to him instead. “It’s late,” he says against Potter’s mouth, half-hauling him inside with the kiss regardless. Potter clings to him and tastes like toothpaste.

“God,” he breathes, pulling back after a long, close minute. “You sure?”

Draco laughs at him again, runs his tongue over the inside of his own mouth, nods.

“I’ll see you at breakfast?”

“Ok.”

Potter smiles and it pulls at Draco’s chest. “Ok. Good.”

“Alright. Leave the window open.”

“Yeah.” Potter stays there, props his head up on one hand. “I should-- I’m going.”

Draco rolls his eyes. “Good night, Potter.”

“G’night, Draco.”

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are, as ever, appreciated x


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